Balancing Privacy and Accuracy: Exploring the Impact of Data Anonymization on Deep Learning Models in Computer Vision

Computer vision has become indispensable in various applications, including autonomous driving, medical imaging, security and surveillance, robotics, and pattern recognition. In recent years, the quality of training data has emerged as a critical factor for ensuring effectiveness in real-world scenarios. However, the increasing stringency of privacy regulations in various regions necessitates careful handling of collected images for computer vision. Personal information within images is typically anonymized by applying anonymization patterns to remove it. Empirical findings underscore the significant influence of data quality on the training of deep learning models. Striking the right balance between privacy and recognition performance becomes paramount. Therefore, it is essential to understand how the anonymization of image datasets affects deep learning model performance. In this paper, we thoroughly analyze the effects of different anonymization techniques on the performance of deep learning-based models in computer vision tasks, with a particular emphasis on presenting a model-centric perspective, such as the type of deep learning model and the number of parameters. We aim to provide valuable insights and guidelines for selecting the optimal level of anonymization that strikes a balance between recognition accuracy and privacy protection.